"Restore(s) a little sanity into current political debate" - Kenneth Minogue, TLS "Projects a more expansive and optimistic future for Americans than (the analysis of) Huntington" - James R. Kurth, National Interest "One of (the) most important books I have read in recent years" - Lexington Green

Advertising

Chicago Boyz is a member of the Amazon Associates, B&H Photo, Ammo.com and other affiliate programs. Your purchases made after clicking those businesses' links help to support this blog.

Some Chicago Boyz advertisers may themselves be members of the Amazon Associates and/or other affiliate programs and benefit from any relevant purchases you make after you click on an Amazon or other link on their ad on Chicago Boyz or on their own web sites.

Chicago Boyz occasionally accepts direct paid advertising for goods or services that in the opinion of Chicago Boyz management would benefit the readers of this blog. Please direct any inquiries to

Copyright

Chicago Boyz is a registered trademark of Chicago Boyz Media, LLC. All original content on the Chicago Boyz web site is copyright 2001-2018 by Chicago Boyz Media, LLC or the Chicago Boyz contributor who posted it. All rights reserved.

Posted by Lexington Green on June 29th, 2006 (All posts by Lexington Green)

In the last few months, I have found myself reading and enjoying what I think of as a “family” of blogs. First, there is Thomas Barnett’s blog, wherein he covers his own travels and doings, promoting his vision of the Core and Gap and how to shrink the latter by expanding the former, through enterprise resilience and development in a box amongst other means. Barnett has a small selection of blogs on his blogroll, among which the ChicagoBoyz are honored to have a place (due I think primarily to this and this). A few of these blogs have been engaged in something like a polymorphous, attenuated and elaborated conversation with Barnett, and with each other, which is greater than the sum of its parts. In particular, I would mention Mark Safranski’s excellent ZenPundit, the unique TDAXP, Coming Anarchy, and in a somewhat more distant orbit, the distressing future visions purveyed at Global Guerillas, as well as T.M. Lutas of Flit(tm) (and sometimes – though I wish more often – of ChicagoBoyz as well). These guys comment on each others’ blogs, pour forth frequent and high quality posts, about Barnett’s theories, about globalization, Fourth Generation Warfare, John Boyd and his OODA loop, political and military trends worldwide, and all kinds of other cool stuff, including abstruse topics, obscure people, and acronyms and terminology I barely understand. (In light of my own recent and near-total blog exhaustion, I am heartened and amazed at the quantity and quality from these guys.) Dan from TDAXP in particular has these posts with amazing charts and graphics, e.g. this one entitled “Secret Warriors Walk without Rhythm, Won’t Attract the Worm”. Dan’s posts often go plunging over the edge of my capacity to comprehend, but are still interesting.

Though it is hard to pick, the Coming Anarchy blog is probably my favorite, though is a damned near-run thing. It features three pseudonymous authors, who go by the names of distinguished Victorian men of letters and men of action, Curzon, Chirol and Younghusband. I get a kick out of this Neo-Victorian tone, which reminds me of my favorite recent SF book, Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer (Bantam Spectra Book) (source of the word “Anglosphere”, btw), and it appeals to my own retro-Victorian Anglophilia.

(Speaking of martial Victoriana check out this incredibly good version of Men of Harlech, sung by the Royal Regiment of Wales’ Band on the 120th anniversary of the battle of Rorke’s Drift, recorded in the church at Rorke’s Drift. From here.)

Coming Anarchy is named after The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War by Robert D. Kaplan of the same name. Kaplan is the source of their motto: “Speak Victorian, Think Pagan”, and is something of a patron saint of their blog. The Coming Anarchy team focuses on what might be called “strategic geography”. And in the footsteps of their hero, Kaplan, they go to remote places and report their findings.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 29th, 2006 at 11:14 pm and is filed under Uncategorized.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Both comments and pings are currently closed.

5 Responses to “Traveling the Far East with Lord Curzon”

Many thanks for the kind words, and the links. I can’t speak for my cobloggers, but I at least actually also found you through Barnett’s blog. And as for your description, “patron saint” is the best one I’ve heard yet!

Tom, I suspect that they don’t know how to get initiated into the “blog world” since it is like a vast jungle and you need a “native guide” to get started.

However, as you know, the better ones are written by knowledgeable people who have all kinds of real-world knowledge, and they have much good thinking, including off the wall thinking, that could be a source of good ideas and insights and “out of the box” mental provocation — all of which might be useful for the professionals.

I think the blogs on your blogroll would be a good place for the intell folks to start, and they could fan out from there.